The Kidnap Job
by Arwen Lune
Summary: Team fic. Eliot is rattled, Parker has a plan. "No, no, no. We are NOT stealing those kids for Sophie and Nate."  warning: mentions of child abuse
1. Chapter 1

**The Kidnap Job**

_(1/3)_

Parker isn't particularly jumpy today, but she still feels him before he's got his hand on the door. She couldn't explain it if she tried, but she halts in her tracks, cereal box in her hand.

Then he's in the room, and she stares down at the half-filled bowl, frozen likes her muscles don't remember motion. From the corner of her eyes she can see that his hands are clenched into fists, and he is radiating anger, enough that she can feel it, like trembling heat in the air around him, coming toward her.

All instinct, she abandons the cereal and scuttles through the nearest door, well out of his way.

.

* * *

.

Eliot stops, only a few steps into the apartment, watching her go.

_Crap._

He knows that look. Has worn that look. The last thing he's ever wanted is to cause it on someone. And certainly not on her.

She's probably off hiding somewhere, but the others haven't noticed a thing. Nate is talking to Sophie about their latest client. Hardison is typing away on his laptop, humming tunelessly.

They know - or at least suspect - the background, but they don't know the signals. Maybe they think it'd be big and dramatic, screaming and crying or somethin'. Not the breathless, frozen, please-don't-notice-me reaction he recognises so well. Remembers so well.

Of course, later on he'd been the one to draw the attention deliberately, trying to keep the anger from focusing on his mother and sister.

"Yo man, what's up? Somebody piss in your wheaties this mornin'?"

"Shut up Hardison," he growls, and goes into the kitchen.

Tea is always good for calming down. The wait for the water to boil, the fragrant steam - he uses the little ritual to breathe down the fury, shake the body anger from his muscles. When the tea is ready he feels calm, or at least as calm as he knows he'll get, and he takes the two mugs with him.

She has a number of hidey-holes in the apartment, places she'll go to when she's upset or confused or just wantin' to be alone. He knows them all, has rated them according to her state of mind. Nook behind the curtains - minor upset or confusion. On top of Nate's big wardrobe - bad days, because height is safety to Parker. Deep in the darkness of the eave spaces - not good at all.

He sets the cups down on the floor, one in front of the dark entrance, and one where he sits down, a few feet away. He settles with his back against the wall and stretches out his legs, just sitting for a while.

The tea is just cooling down enough to drink when she pokes her head out.

"Hi!"

It's a little brighter than he thinks it ought to be, but then you never can tell with Parker. She crouches on hands and knees, sniffing at the tea he's set down for her like she's some small furtive animal. Then, snapping out of whatever little game she's been playing, she picks up the cup and sits down next to him, shoulder to shoulder and hip against hip.

Nobody else gets away with that, but she - well, she's Parker.

"Sorry," he says quietly. Knows it's probably not necessary, that she understands the tea for the apology it is, but he needs the word to be out there.

"What made angry Eliot turn up?"

He lets out a deep breath.

"Saw somethin' on my way over here... this woman just completely went off on her kids at a crossing. Yellin' and jerkin' them around."

He knows that parents have breaking points, and Lord knew he'd been no angel himself. It had been the expressions of the kids though, the downcast, quiet looks that said that this wasn't new to them.

"Didya stop?"

"Couldn't." He huffs out a breath in frustration. "By the time I could, they were long gone."

She leans her head against his shoulder, and he resists the urge to put his arm around her.

"Not like there's much I could do anyway, is there?" he grumbles finally. "I mean, they were too young to know that your mama is not s'pposed to be doin' that. Be real upsetting if some stranger started yellin' at her."

And it's not like being taken away from their mother and going into the system is such a stellar option. That doesn't need saying.

"We could steal them and keep them," Parker says brightly.

"Parker darlin', when you steal kids they call it kidnapping," he says, half amused, half incredulous. "And people get real upset about it."

That doesn't seem to sink in, so he changes tack.

"'sides, not like we'd be any good as parents."

He knows all too well that in stress situations, you follow the examples you've always had. Even his sister, too young to really remember the worst of their youth, struggled with her own kids. Years of therapy and anger management later she's the sort of parent they all should have had. He's happily paid for quite a bit of it, anything to help his nieces have the right sort of childhood. Anything to help his sister stop from becoming the sort of parent she never wanted to be.

"We're too broken," Parker agrees. There should be emotion in that statement, but there isn't. She's looking at the top of the stairs which lead down into the living. "There's something wrong with _us_..."

He chuckles as he follows her fractured, meandering trail of thought.

"No, no, no. We are _not_ stealing those kids for Sophie and Nate."

"Think about it!" she says with that manic grin that makes his heart ache. "Nathan lost his son, and Sophie-" she leans forward and gestures in the air with her teacup, spilling a little. "She wants kids -and the kids need better parents! It's perfect!"

He doesn't say anything, because he doesn't think it's required, but he puts his arm around her while she tries to reconcile fantasy with reality. Parker smiles and nestles against his side.

.

TBC


	2. Chapter 2

**The Kidnap Job**

_(2/3)_

_.  
_

"Hey, what you guys up to?"

Eliot is surprised it's taken Hardison this long to come looking for them. There's just a touch of jealousy in the way he takes in how they're sitting.

"Tea," he says, drinking the cold remains and putting the cup down. Parker's gone silent, face blank. Maybe still processing what they've been talking about.

"Theft," she says suddenly, in that tone that she thinks explains everything.

"Kidnapping, remember?" he corrects.

"Kidnapping?" Hardison's eyebrows climb his forehead.

"Eliot saw someone be mean to her kids this morning, so we're going to steal them and give them to Nate and Sophie," she explains.

"That sounds like a _great_ plan," he says, and Eliot glares at him for that obvious I'm-humouring-you tone.

Parker holds up her free arm, and Hardison takes the invitation, settling in close next to her. Eliot hides a smile. It's not all that often that Parker wants to be touched.

"So where'd we find those kids?"

"Eliot saw them in the street. But you have surveillance camera feeds and stuff, right?"

"Yeah, yeah, no problem." He pulls out his fancy phone. "Time? Location?"

"'bout nine forty," Eliot says, against his better judgement. "Corner of Fairfield and Beacon."

"Uh-huh," Hardison is glued to his phone, and Parker looks excited.

"But look, we're not gonna do this, all right? You don't just take kids away from their mama like that. Maybe she's stressed out and this was a one time thing, maybe they're getting help-"

"You don't believe that," Parker says. "Or you wouldn't have been so angry."

Yeah, she's got him there. He doesn't believe that.

"We're still not doing this."

"Not doing what?" Sophie is slowly climbing the stairs, taking the three of them in with a slight smile.

"Kidnapping children," Eliot grinds out, imploring her to talk some sense into them.

"What? Of course we're not doing that."

"What if they need better parents?" Parker says. "Then it would be a good thing, right?"

"Not if we kidnapped them, it wouldn't!" Sophie looks baffled that this is even being discussed. "What's this about?" She settles down on the top step of the stairs.

"Someone was really mean to her kids this morning and it upset Eliot, so we're going to track them down and steal the kids," Parker explains.

"Thanks for makin' it sound like my idea, there," he grumbles.

"Well what do YOU want?" Parker's voice rises. She's getting a little upset.

"Crap, I don't know," he says quickly. "I think the system's got the right idea, it just fucks up in the execution. Ain't a bad thing to see if you can help a family before you get the kids out. My sister-" he abruptly shuts his mouth, about to say way more than he intended.

Sophie is giving him her how-can-I-get-you-talking-again look. The others are not so subtle. Parker pokes his thigh with her finger.

"What?"

"What about your sister?"

He's silent for a long time, hoping they'll back off and the conversation will move away from this subject, but they all seem to be having an unusual amount of focus today.

_Why does that shit only __happen when it's inconvenient, and never during jobs when we could use some frikkin' focus?_

Parker pokes him again. He gets hold of her wrist before she can do it a third time. There's a bruise on this leg from where a mark kicked him a couple of days ago, though maybe she doesn't know that. Then again, maybe she does.

"There's such a thing as the cycle of violence," he finally says. "People don't usually decide to... do that stuff. Sometimes they don't know any other way, because they never had a better example. And there's ways to learn, if they want to. Like anger management and parenting classes and shit."

He suddenly needs his feet under him, he's feeling crowded. He ignores Parker's disappointed little sound when he takes his arm away from around her, and slips past Sophie and down the stairs.

"Well, I thought that was an impressively moderate response..." he hears Sophie's voice float down the stairs, and then he's safely out of earshot.

He ducks into the small bedroom that's become his, not that he sleeps there often but sometimes the others insist on not letting him go home after a job. Like he hasn't slept off a concussion on his own about fifty times. It usually annoys him when they do the concerned thing, but he appreciates that they care. Even if he'd never admit to it.

Just like he'll never admit that it matters that Parker, who is very good at shielding herself from things that don't affect her, is sinking her teeth into this situation at least partly because he was upset and she wants him to feel better. Of course, going about it entirely impractical, unrealistic and trademark Parker style.

But still.

He finishes changing and puts on his running shoes.

"You going out again?" Nate is still on the sofa. Eliot wonders if he doesn't know about the little circle upstairs or if he's waiting for the right moment to butt in on it.

"Need air. Be back in an hour or so."

Nate just grunts, and Eliot is off, finding peace in the rhythmic pounding of his feet, the push and pull of his breath. He doesn't push it too much just yet, not with that big-ass bruise on his leg, but it's just what he needed.

When he comes back they're all busy with the current client, and there's no more mention of anything that happened that morning. He's a little surprised that Parker has let go of her kidnapping plan so easily, and a little relieved that he doesn't have to stop her from doing something so crazy as kidnapping children. And more than a little pissed off with himself that he doesn't know how to help those kids, and is going to end up just another bystander to their misery.

TBC


	3. Chapter 3

**The Kidnap Job**

* * *

It's two days later, and Nate's kept him busy with all sorts of recon work. He's done a little online research late at night and he thinks he might know a way to get that family into contact with the right sort of social worker, but without Hardison's skills in tracking them down via surveillance camera's there ain't much he can do, and he's reluctant to ask. Eliot is just shucking his suit jacket and tie when he hears Sophie and Hardison enter the apartment.

"...and I can't be there in the way Debbie can," Sophie is explaining.

"You can call though," Hardison says. "Check in on them."

"And I intend to, I just didn't want their care to depend on my..unreliable.. life."

Eliot steps out of his bedroom, undoing the top buttons of his white shirt, and nods in greeting.

Hardison looks plain and conservative in a dark red sweater. Sophie.. her hair and makeup are downplaying her, deliberately he thinks. She looks a little older, a little plainer, with a pale green shirt and a maternal brown knitted cardigan. Nate's had them do some sort of meeting in a library. It had sounded marginally more interesting than watching milk curdle.

Sophie flashes him a smile.

"How was today?"

He scowls. "I had to pretend to be an office temp. How do you think it was?"

"An _interesting_ insight into the lives of the office-working population?" Hardison grins.

"Yeah, it was _fascinating._"

"Scintillating?" Sophie suggests.

"Ohh, nice one. Engrossing?" Hardison again.

"Try bor_ing_ and humiliat_ing_," he grumbles, wondering what sort of game they were at.

"AND OTHER WORDS ENDING ON -ING!" Parker yelled down the stairs.

"You're all nuts," Eliot summarised the situation. "And I need a beer."

It's that evening, when he's settled into the comfortable chair with his second beer and his book, that Parker bounces over to him.

"Hi!" she drapes herself over the sides and back of the chair, legs on one side, cheek resting on his shoulder like she's some sort of bizarre fur stole. He can't quite hide his smile.

"Hello darlin', how are ya?"

"Good!"

He winces from her volume so close to his ear.

"I went and planted files instead of stealing them and it was all really exciting because this lady asked me questions and I answered them and I think I did all right because she let me go and maybe I can do grifting after all and we didn't even steal those kids but they are still going to be better I think!"

There's a pause while he mentally reruns that with commas and full stops inserted. She's playing with his hair, which is a little distracting.

"Those kids? You went to plant files for those kids?" That at least he can make out.

"Isn't that _cool_?"

He idly strokes the blonde braid that is hanging down over his shoulder and tries to formulate a response.

"We did a little more than plant files though," Sophie sat down on the sofa with a glass of wine. "We tracked the family down, went in to talk to them-"

"You talked to her? How did that go?"

"Not bad at all, actually. You weren't far off - her husband left her last month and the kids have been really difficult. Add to that financial troubles and the fact that her in-laws used to watch the kids.. She said she'd been thinking about getting help, but she was worried they would just take the kids away from her."

"So what'd you actually do?"

"Well, essentially we did an intake of her and the children, and then inserted them into the system."

"Parenting class, child care vouchers, food stamps..." Hardison summed up, walking into the living area with his laptop in front of him, nose still buried in it. "Forget anything?"

"Twice-weekly sessions with a parenting coach who works closely with a social worker, so if things go downhill it'll be noticed too," Sophie said. "Parker planted the physical files, Alec did the digital side."

"We basically navigated the entire system for her and did all the admin," Hardison says without looking up from his screen. "Should take care of itself from here on."

"I'll call her occasionally though, to see how she's doing."

Eliot doesn't say anything. Isn't sure if he could form words even if he did know what to say. God, they've done this... for those kids, of course, but also a little for him. They made it their business because he had made it his. And they did it so he didn't even have to ask for their help, probably because they knew he wouldn't ask.

He takes a deep breath, trying to summon the rights words to say, but they don't come, and he closes his mouth again. Nobody seems to notice. Hardison doesn't look up from his screen. Sophie sips her wine while looking through a fashion magazine.

And Parker - she brushes a quick kiss onto his cheek, stage-whispers "You're welcome" and then slides from her weird perch on the back of his chair. He watches her as she bounces off, a little bemused.

He puts down his book and glasses, downs the last of his beer and gets up.

"Rack of lamb tonight, I think." _Honey glaze maybe. There's fresh rosemary too. _Yeah, that seems about right.

* * *

The End


End file.
